


Wilder Than

by CloudDreamer



Series: Portraits of Monsters [3]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Coping Mechanisms, Post-Golden Morning (Parahumans)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:47:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22040542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: In which an exile considers her haunting by an angel and a hero.
Series: Portraits of Monsters [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583266
Kudos: 9





	Wilder Than

The exile’s knife digs deep into the wood, leaving one precisely cut chip coming away. _Too deep,_ she thinks as she pulls her carving away from her narrow focus. The edge of this feathered wing will be fragile and the other ones are somewhere between too thick to be graceful but too narrow to risk pushing but thinner. 

And the face is a blank cube, barely touched. The exile can’t bring herself to start there. How would she even begin to show that face? What expression? The rest of the form felt natural— the wings curve out, wide, leaving most of the body exposed. Alien angles, made normal in the wood. This exercise should make her feel peaceful, like it always did. 

It doesn’t. All she can think of is that night, the creature of sky and snow descending on her home. Perfectly white— an absence of different. All the light, drawn to her elegant form. The skull splitting sound of her haunting song, cut short just before the deadline. 

And then the exile thinks about him, and she’s clutching the knife like it’s a weapon. Like it could do anything if he manifested here, now. Even if the half formed token had any of the cursed angel’s power— he’d killed the Simurgh’s brothers with ease. If he was here... The golden light would rain, and he would scorch this Earth that isn’t hers, was never hers, until there was nothing but ash left. 

He’s gone, she reminds herself. Slain. She’s dormant.

The other capes don’t know if the Endbringers will come back, and if they do, what they’ll do. Will her cursed angel destroy them, with her mind far sharper than this small knife. Sharper than any knife. Sharp enough to plan this— whatever this was. Or will she save them from themselves? Like she did then, on Gold Morning. The exile knows. 

It had to have been her. 

She puts down the half complete carving of the Simurgh on the stump she uses as a table, leaning back to stretch. Her neck and back are almost sore. Not quite painful yet.

The exile has been experimenting with the various species of wood in this forest her fellow wanderers had settled into for whittling, and the differences are proving frustrating. The trees trend shorter and more supple than anything she’d used on Bet. They burn well, at the very least. It’ll be useful in winter, if winter on this Earth is as bad as it is in corresponding land at home.

The exile’s curly jet black hair fall back into her face, and she pushes them back away. She needs to cut it one of these days. 

It’s starting to reach her shoulders, and if anyone shows up to fight, she needs to... 

Breathe. 

The heroes say they won that night when her life was interrupted, thrown off its trajectory, but she was sent careening through a whirlwind of cause and effect anyway. The art hadn’t come easy to the exile and didn’t always serve as the best coping mechanism, but it was always there. Sometimes she’ll drift into a dissociative state, unsure of where she was, and she’ll come back into focus with dozens of small cuts from where she’d been careless. 

The exile had almost found her peace. Nearly moved past the attack, even though it’d killed so many people she’d known. Not even people she’d liked. Just... people she’d seen on the street a couple times. In a shop. The barista who’d memorized her order because she always ordered the same thing. 

She doesn’t order anything any more. That city recovered too, over time, even if the dead were still gone. But it’d all fallen apart again so quickly. 

Scion. The hero who’d saved her from the Simurgh when she was just becoming a teenager. Perfect in every way. Humanity at its extreme. Strong and solid. He was even made of gold. 

The Simurgh. The cursed angel who’d saved her from that childhood hero when she was just turning to adulthood. So alien in her form, in her song that could drive anyone past their limits. How many of the Slaughterhouse Nine are hers? 

And yet, she saved her.

It broke her.


End file.
